Release notes/7.1.0

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OLPC
Release Notes for the XO software

These are the release notes for release 7.1.0, also known as "Ship.2", which incorporated build 650 of the system software.
This is the build installed on the XO laptops that G1G1 2007 donors received starting in December 2007.

General release notes

If you are looking for help on getting started, please see the [1] pages.

Network Connectivity

WPA does not work in this version

You can connect to a WPA access point through the User Interface in the current software version, 767. We are not working on a patch right now.

There is a script for the WPA workaround script and the detailed instructions to get around this bug. This is for advanced unixal [2] users.

Some encrypted Access Points require Hex key

If you try to connect to an encrypted (WEP or WPA) wireless access point (AP) with a password or passphrase, the connection may be not be successful.

Every AP manufacturer uses a different algorithm for converting a passphrase to a key. The most reliable method for connecting to your own access point is to use a hex key when configuring the AP, then use the same hex key when you try to access it from the XO. Here are a couple of links for converting passwords and phrases to hex keys for WEP and WPA environments: WEP Hex converter, WPA Hex Converter

Collaboration and Sharing Activities

Sharing is an activity specific feature

There are a number of ways that activities might share or communicate with each other. For instance Chat will allow many laptops to connect and text typed on any laptop will be seen on all the laptops that are currently sharing.

When you share the Record Activity, the pictures taken after joining the activity will automatically be shared. Pictures taken before other have joined the activity are not shared.

To find out how sharing works (or if sharing has been implemented) in any particular activity, please see the notes on that Activity.

Sometimes when you are using the touchpad, the mouse jumps to the edge or corner of the screen making it very difficult to use it.

It might help to re-calibrate the trackpad by pressing the four corner keys of the laptop, ensuring that the last one pressed is the 'fn' key. If this doesn't work, it might respond to restarting sugar by pressing these three keys at one time: Alt, Ctl, Erase. Finally, if that doesn't work, the problems might go away by reinstalling the software or when you upgrade to the next version.

I've actually corrected this issue a few times by pressing hard on the trackpad near the corner or edge to which the cursor tends to jump.

Activities

Paint

The tablet mode, where you can use a stylus on the touchpad, is not working in build 650.

Users can only draw horizontal arrows. (#4170) In the future, the Ctrl key will be used to rotate shapes.

The selection tool only has limited functions: the paint bucket cannot fill in the selected area, one cannot crop, delete, or resize the selected area, one cannot apply effects to the selected area, etc. (#3699, #3701, #3702)

The software is just maturing to the point where we can embark upon later-stage trials for feedback and polish. Please review the #Notes below and please report any new bugs to our trac system (See http://dev.laptop.org).

Overview

New in this release, Ship.2:

Network upgrades via 'olpc-update' (see below for details)

More robust wireless networking

Overall, most of the first-generation vision for our system is now present and working:

Automatic configuration of ad-hoc meshes, allowing collaboration without any infrastructure or Internet access

Automatic configuration of school server mesh

Infrastructure Access Point connections

Anti-theft activation on installation

Coming in future releases:

Improvements on document and image transfer

Improvements on jabber server for collaborating outside of the peer-to-peer mesh

Better security for activities

Integrated collaboration within activities (??)

Important notes

At this time, we do not recommend installing latest software on B2 systems due to some driver incompatibilities and excessive RAM and CPU usage.

Upgrades / Stable Builds

The release notes on this page apply to the stable software release, already installed on MP(mass-produced) systems for 2007 G1G1 donors: Build 650 (2007-12-05). We recommend that you follow the instructions found on the Stable Upgrade page.

Network Connectivity

Hover over the circles to see the names of network access points (APs)

Click on the one you want to connect to

Connecting to a WEP enabled Access Point

To connect to most WEP enabled APs, you click on the AP in the neighborhood view (as above); then add the WEP key either as a password, a pass-phrase, or as a hexadecimal value.

Some APs (such as the Apple Extreme) will only work with a hexadecimal value. If you have a password or passphrase, go to Hex Converter to get the hex key. Also, with the Apple Extreme you need to set 'shared key'. Most other APs prefer the 'open key' setting when using WEP.

Connecting to a WPA enabled AP

We continue to work on improving support for WPA encryption, and hope to have a better solution in our Update.1 release. In the meanwhile, WPA AP documents procedures for manual use of WPA encrypted access points.

Sugar Control Panel

You can now set some configuration parameters on the laptop from the command line in the Terminal Activity. The following parameters are settable:

Backward Compatibility

Upgrading to 650

From 623 (ship.1)

Using olpc-update to get to 650 will not work. It fails due to some unicode character problems, which were fixed in 650.

If your laptop is secure, you should do a secure upgrade via USB to get to 650. This will overwrite the entire file system, so you should back up any files you want to save before doing this. You can follow the instructions: Upgrade_B*

In some jurisdictions, patents on algorithms apply, and royalty payments may be required. Examples include MP3, and MPEG-4. This is a particular nuisance for media players, for which many of the common codecs algorithms are patented. In other jurisdictions, software patents do not apply and there are usually freely available implementations for these algorithms available. Sometimes, as in Adobe Flash, or the Real Helix player there are free (as in beer) implementations available, where those corporations have paid these patent royalties and made usually (binary) versions of codecs available. This has direct consequences as OLPC does not want to burden all machines with what may be unnecessary duplicate patent royalties: OLPC must therefore leave the customization of the distribution for these formats for "in country". For jurisdictions in which such patent laws apply, there are now solutions such as those sold by Fluendo to these issues. The Flash format (whether Adobe's Flash 9 or Gnash) illustrates this problem well; even though we can include gnash, as built it does not have support for MP3 or MPEG-4, which should work correctly if Gnash is rebuilt.

Applications can take a very long time to start, due to a fontconfig caching bug provoked by the time being set incorrectly (which can happen easily if the battery is replaced or the time is set badly). To work around this problem, use the "date" command from a console to set the current time and date.

Where to find source

Many of the OLPC activities, kernel, and other software are in our git repository.